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rodoThe topic of this post is one that has been on my mind for years, and this certainly isn’t the first attempt to write it all down. This post is about my very subjective experience in fandom, which, I believe, is not quite normal. I suppose all of you who are multifannish know at least to some degree what I am talking about, because essentially, I am talking about being in two fandoms at once. But while most people experience two fandoms as two different things they’re interested in, for me, it is the same thing, in two languages.
So I suppose this is where I should introduce myself: I am a German and German is my first language. I didn’t really start learning English until I was ten (so I am not really bilingual). I started writing fanfiction when I was seven. I discovered fandom when I started reading the AnimaniA when I was fourteen. I doubt more than a few of you ever touched that magazine, but I loved it. Buying the new issue was more fun than Christmas. I discovered online fandom when I was nineteen, googling Harry Potter and finding Animexx. A few months later, somebody posted the translation of this really great Harry Potter fanfic (or so I thought at the time – it was the Draco Trilogy), and I started reading it in English.
That was five years ago, and since then, I spent time in English and in German fandom. Many people would, I think, think it enlightening to be able to participate in discussions in two languages. And to a degree, it is. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to change it, because now that I know what the English fandom is like, I really wouldn’t want to leave. In fact, if I had to choose, I would chose the English and not the German one. But: Being a bilingual fan certainly has its disadvantages. I am living in two places at once, I have to be two different persons at times, and that does not feel nice at all.
The English fandom, for example, has meta. Lots of it. They even have a name for it. But while the topic is certainly not unknown in German fandom (as a look at ff.de’s pages on columns and essays shows, which occasionally includes discussions on slash and writing tips), the name is only used by those who are part of the English fandom as well (see: ff.de’s forum). I love meta. I certainly miss meta when I am in German fandom, especially the sort that people really thought about. And the really intellectual meta. I sometimes feel as if the German fandom is unable to follow me when I start talking in that direction (and I know that is a shitty thing to say, but that’s how I feel).
Another problem with German meta discussions is the different background. I learned to deal with meta-y things via![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
metafandom, which I suppose is true for most of us who haven’t been in fandom long enough to remember a time when there was no metafandom. And following metafandom established a background we use when we talk, a background that is missing in discussion with the German fandom altogether.
I feel the same when it comes to various other fandom related communities, especially![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fanficrants and fandom_wank, both of which shaped the mind of the English fandom enough to establish phrases like “thoughts on yaoi”. Mocking other fans is considered horrible in most of the German fandom. The only community with that specific purpose was deleted a while ago. It was a sporking community on LJ called ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
loesch_dich and I don’t quite remember why the mods deleted it, but I do remember that I thought it a pity and unnecessary. And I loved the sporking of BlackBolt's “novels”. Big scandals like those around Cassandra Claire and MsScribe couldn’t happen in German fandom. Even the mention of gugi28’s bad behaviour and her accusing unsuspecting new fans of plagiarism when all they did was invent an OC who was slightly similar to hers was deleted (and I forgot to take screencaps), despite being neutral and totally unwanky (at least compared to what ends up on fandom_wank). I know of no place where German fandom can be properly criticized, apart from English fandom, that is. And I think fandom_wank and similar communities are good for a fandom, because on the one hand they serve as an outlet for all the negative feelings, and on the other they establish some sort of rules for community interaction. German fandom needs a place where young fans can learn not to tell others that liking slash/incest stories is OMG SO SICK and that wanky behaviour should be avoided.
German fandom also needs to learn that comments aren’t everything. I know, English fandom has its own fair share of comment whoring and stories that are held hostage. That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about the fact that in discussions with German authors, I am often told that a good reader writes a comment, because the author has to be paid for a story. The story is seen as a service to the fans that has to be paid for, not as something the author does because s/he likes it or as something the author does as a thank you. There is a hierarchy in fandom, and it places the reader on the bottom. Readers who don’t review are bad readers; I sometimes even get the feeling that they are considered worse than the people who don’t read the story at all. There even is a word for readers like that: “Schwarzleser”. It’s a term that has its origin in the term “Schwarzfahrer” (literally black passenger – meaning someone who takes a train or bus without paying) and “Leser”, the German word for reader. I don’t think the English fandom has developed a term for that yet.
Another thing the German fandom lacks, at least in my opinion, is the presence on journaling platforms. The English fandom on LJ and its clones is enormous. The German part, at least as I remember it, is tiny. I know quite a few people are from Germany, but they don’t participate in anything German. Their journal entries are in English, so that they can communicate with their English speaking friends. After a while, many start writing fanfic in English as well. I am one of those people who really like journaling platforms, because they allow me more freedom than most archives (my main issues with them is generally linked to the fact that I am not free to do as I like), and I generally like reading other peoples’ journals and the flist makes it so much easier to find all the new fic you’re interested in than combing through all the pages of an archive. I like the sense of community as well.
There are, of course, things the German fandom has that the English fandom doesn’t. For one, it allows me to use my dearly beloved first language. Something that I rather like about the German fandom on principle, despite not finding much use for it myself, is the amount of translated fic. Some people aren’t talented when it comes to writing their own stories, some of them lack the ideas, but quite a few of these people can still use their talent to translate stories. I only know of a handful of stories that are translated into English, often by the German authors themselves, but there are a lot of fanfictions in German archives that are translations. Ff.de has threads in which people ask for help translating a certain phrase, threads in which the merits and difficulties of translations are discussed and even those in which potential readers ask other people to translate a fic for them.
And of course there is Animexx, which I don’t like for a lot of reasons (too strict, too focussed on anime and manga), which is an archive maintained by a non-profit organisation that hosts fanfiction, dōjinshi, fanart, cosplay, fic contests and a myriad of other things. It was founded in 2000. Sound familiar? Well, at least that’s what I thought when I first heard of the OTW’s archive. I sincerely hope that the OTW’s archive won’t develop the way Animexx did in terms of focus on visual art and policy, but in terms of functionality, I think Animexx is rather more than English archive users are used to. At least as far as I know. (You can check out the very reduced English version here.) So to me, at least, the idea of the OTW was not a new one. A good one, yes (I’m a volunteer, after all), but not a radically new one.
A difference between the two fandoms, the way I see it, is the fact that a lot of the English fandom culture seems to be based on the traditions of media fandom, while the German fandom seems to be more focussed on anime/manga fandom. That might just be my impression because I started out on Animexx, but I still get that impression when I’m on ff.de now, despite the main fandoms being Harry Potter and Twilight.
Now all this means one thing for me: I am two people. When I am my English fandom person, I can’t talk to anybody about what happened to yaoi.de without having to start with a lengthy explanation on the German laws for the protection of minors. (The end result is this: adult fanfiction on German websites can only be accessed during the night and/or after you sent the maintainers your identification card number so that they verify that you’re an adult. And for God's sake, don't ever call it porn.) I can’t talk about racefail with Germans. I have to separate knowledge and behaviour in my head so that I don’t accidentally think English fandom hates readers. I can’t use the same platforms. I have to watch out for spoilers (both ways – we got the final Pushing Daisies episodes last month). I have to keep track of air dates and publication details. I have to remember that musings on translating fic should be written in German rather than in English. But nobody will read it anyway there since it’s meta and Germans don’t read meta. The latest post onfandom_wank? Nobody’s read it and the fandom isn’t big in German anyway. A “yes, but” would probably not be the best way to react to the enthusiasm for the idea behind the OTW because the people I’m talking to have never even heard of Animexx.
The two fandoms are not entirely separated, though. I do meet quite a few Germans onfanficrants, and many people on my flist are Germans (writing in English, but they will at least heard of some of the things I’m talking about) and there are a number of people in German fandom who are in English fandom as well. But the topics that are discussed are often separate. While the English fandom talked about racefail, ff.de was told to delete the fanfictions for a certain book series by the author’s lawyers. Something that hasn’t happened in German fandom before, at least to my knowledge. While people in the German fandom argued about the new rating system on ff.de, English fandom squeed about Dreamwidth. And I do both, but almost never with the same people or in the same space.
Dreamwidth will make it harder for me to have one place for both of my personas. The Archive of Our Own and the OTW might make it easier, but I doubt I’ll ever be able to have just one fan personality.
So I suppose this is where I should introduce myself: I am a German and German is my first language. I didn’t really start learning English until I was ten (so I am not really bilingual). I started writing fanfiction when I was seven. I discovered fandom when I started reading the AnimaniA when I was fourteen. I doubt more than a few of you ever touched that magazine, but I loved it. Buying the new issue was more fun than Christmas. I discovered online fandom when I was nineteen, googling Harry Potter and finding Animexx. A few months later, somebody posted the translation of this really great Harry Potter fanfic (or so I thought at the time – it was the Draco Trilogy), and I started reading it in English.
That was five years ago, and since then, I spent time in English and in German fandom. Many people would, I think, think it enlightening to be able to participate in discussions in two languages. And to a degree, it is. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to change it, because now that I know what the English fandom is like, I really wouldn’t want to leave. In fact, if I had to choose, I would chose the English and not the German one. But: Being a bilingual fan certainly has its disadvantages. I am living in two places at once, I have to be two different persons at times, and that does not feel nice at all.
The English fandom, for example, has meta. Lots of it. They even have a name for it. But while the topic is certainly not unknown in German fandom (as a look at ff.de’s pages on columns and essays shows, which occasionally includes discussions on slash and writing tips), the name is only used by those who are part of the English fandom as well (see: ff.de’s forum). I love meta. I certainly miss meta when I am in German fandom, especially the sort that people really thought about. And the really intellectual meta. I sometimes feel as if the German fandom is unable to follow me when I start talking in that direction (and I know that is a shitty thing to say, but that’s how I feel).
Another problem with German meta discussions is the different background. I learned to deal with meta-y things via
metafandom, which I suppose is true for most of us who haven’t been in fandom long enough to remember a time when there was no metafandom. And following metafandom established a background we use when we talk, a background that is missing in discussion with the German fandom altogether.I feel the same when it comes to various other fandom related communities, especially
fanficrants and fandom_wank, both of which shaped the mind of the English fandom enough to establish phrases like “thoughts on yaoi”. Mocking other fans is considered horrible in most of the German fandom. The only community with that specific purpose was deleted a while ago. It was a sporking community on LJ called loesch_dich and I don’t quite remember why the mods deleted it, but I do remember that I thought it a pity and unnecessary. And I loved the sporking of BlackBolt's “novels”. Big scandals like those around Cassandra Claire and MsScribe couldn’t happen in German fandom. Even the mention of gugi28’s bad behaviour and her accusing unsuspecting new fans of plagiarism when all they did was invent an OC who was slightly similar to hers was deleted (and I forgot to take screencaps), despite being neutral and totally unwanky (at least compared to what ends up on fandom_wank). I know of no place where German fandom can be properly criticized, apart from English fandom, that is. And I think fandom_wank and similar communities are good for a fandom, because on the one hand they serve as an outlet for all the negative feelings, and on the other they establish some sort of rules for community interaction. German fandom needs a place where young fans can learn not to tell others that liking slash/incest stories is OMG SO SICK and that wanky behaviour should be avoided.German fandom also needs to learn that comments aren’t everything. I know, English fandom has its own fair share of comment whoring and stories that are held hostage. That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about the fact that in discussions with German authors, I am often told that a good reader writes a comment, because the author has to be paid for a story. The story is seen as a service to the fans that has to be paid for, not as something the author does because s/he likes it or as something the author does as a thank you. There is a hierarchy in fandom, and it places the reader on the bottom. Readers who don’t review are bad readers; I sometimes even get the feeling that they are considered worse than the people who don’t read the story at all. There even is a word for readers like that: “Schwarzleser”. It’s a term that has its origin in the term “Schwarzfahrer” (literally black passenger – meaning someone who takes a train or bus without paying) and “Leser”, the German word for reader. I don’t think the English fandom has developed a term for that yet.
Another thing the German fandom lacks, at least in my opinion, is the presence on journaling platforms. The English fandom on LJ and its clones is enormous. The German part, at least as I remember it, is tiny. I know quite a few people are from Germany, but they don’t participate in anything German. Their journal entries are in English, so that they can communicate with their English speaking friends. After a while, many start writing fanfic in English as well. I am one of those people who really like journaling platforms, because they allow me more freedom than most archives (my main issues with them is generally linked to the fact that I am not free to do as I like), and I generally like reading other peoples’ journals and the flist makes it so much easier to find all the new fic you’re interested in than combing through all the pages of an archive. I like the sense of community as well.
There are, of course, things the German fandom has that the English fandom doesn’t. For one, it allows me to use my dearly beloved first language. Something that I rather like about the German fandom on principle, despite not finding much use for it myself, is the amount of translated fic. Some people aren’t talented when it comes to writing their own stories, some of them lack the ideas, but quite a few of these people can still use their talent to translate stories. I only know of a handful of stories that are translated into English, often by the German authors themselves, but there are a lot of fanfictions in German archives that are translations. Ff.de has threads in which people ask for help translating a certain phrase, threads in which the merits and difficulties of translations are discussed and even those in which potential readers ask other people to translate a fic for them.
And of course there is Animexx, which I don’t like for a lot of reasons (too strict, too focussed on anime and manga), which is an archive maintained by a non-profit organisation that hosts fanfiction, dōjinshi, fanart, cosplay, fic contests and a myriad of other things. It was founded in 2000. Sound familiar? Well, at least that’s what I thought when I first heard of the OTW’s archive. I sincerely hope that the OTW’s archive won’t develop the way Animexx did in terms of focus on visual art and policy, but in terms of functionality, I think Animexx is rather more than English archive users are used to. At least as far as I know. (You can check out the very reduced English version here.) So to me, at least, the idea of the OTW was not a new one. A good one, yes (I’m a volunteer, after all), but not a radically new one.
A difference between the two fandoms, the way I see it, is the fact that a lot of the English fandom culture seems to be based on the traditions of media fandom, while the German fandom seems to be more focussed on anime/manga fandom. That might just be my impression because I started out on Animexx, but I still get that impression when I’m on ff.de now, despite the main fandoms being Harry Potter and Twilight.
Now all this means one thing for me: I am two people. When I am my English fandom person, I can’t talk to anybody about what happened to yaoi.de without having to start with a lengthy explanation on the German laws for the protection of minors. (The end result is this: adult fanfiction on German websites can only be accessed during the night and/or after you sent the maintainers your identification card number so that they verify that you’re an adult. And for God's sake, don't ever call it porn.) I can’t talk about racefail with Germans. I have to separate knowledge and behaviour in my head so that I don’t accidentally think English fandom hates readers. I can’t use the same platforms. I have to watch out for spoilers (both ways – we got the final Pushing Daisies episodes last month). I have to keep track of air dates and publication details. I have to remember that musings on translating fic should be written in German rather than in English. But nobody will read it anyway there since it’s meta and Germans don’t read meta. The latest post on
fandom_wank? Nobody’s read it and the fandom isn’t big in German anyway. A “yes, but” would probably not be the best way to react to the enthusiasm for the idea behind the OTW because the people I’m talking to have never even heard of Animexx.The two fandoms are not entirely separated, though. I do meet quite a few Germans on
fanficrants, and many people on my flist are Germans (writing in English, but they will at least heard of some of the things I’m talking about) and there are a number of people in German fandom who are in English fandom as well. But the topics that are discussed are often separate. While the English fandom talked about racefail, ff.de was told to delete the fanfictions for a certain book series by the author’s lawyers. Something that hasn’t happened in German fandom before, at least to my knowledge. While people in the German fandom argued about the new rating system on ff.de, English fandom squeed about Dreamwidth. And I do both, but almost never with the same people or in the same space.Dreamwidth will make it harder for me to have one place for both of my personas. The Archive of Our Own and the OTW might make it easier, but I doubt I’ll ever be able to have just one fan personality.
Way too much navel gazing and rambling...
Date: 2009-05-04 10:23 am (UTC)Verbotene Liebe is a soap opera and it currently has both a cute guy gay storyline and a lesbian triangle storyline. Both the gay story and the lesbian story are subtitled on youtube. So it can get pretty fascinating that the German fans (who usually watch the entire 25 minutes show) and the non-German fans (who often know/understand the show only by these slices they get on youtube) often have very different perspectives.
For example, currently the gay storyline is in a bit of a storyline lull and the international fans take it a lot harder because this storyline is really their ony accesspoint while the German fans are often much more positive and zen because if there is no story or scene with the couple in an episode they knew why because they have seen the rest of the show.
The interesting thing to me is that at the moment the gay storyline part of the fandom is much more English than German (and especially was so in the beginning) and so the infrastructure is mostly English at this point. (the current situation is that the main message board is English but has a very active German All-In-One thread). Compared to that the lesbian storyline fandom at the moment is much more German focused (probably because the story is currently slow so there is again a bigger reward for people who watch the entire show while it's harder to follow for people who don't get the whole picture). There are some allowances made for English infrastructure (the board is in German but offers rarely used English subforums which were created recently).
One thing I found interesting is that in lesbian forums, the English side is so underdeveloped that the English speaking fans rather than talking amongst themselves hang out in the Spoiler or Episode Diskussion threads of the Germans and either post their thoughts in broken German or in English and repeatedly ask for clarification if they didn't understand something properly.
It might actualy slowly be happening in the gay couple part of the fandom too because at the moment with less storyline the German thread becomes almost more active than the general English area of the board and I know some people lurk just to see the pictures and try to follow the discussion. Sometimes they too like in the lesbian board post in there in English (especially Dutch fans who can read the German of the rest of the thread but don't feel secure enough to write it themselves).
Languagewise, I know when the storyline first took off a lot of people started learning German just because they liked the storyline/show so much and there were a lot of questions about German grammar. I know of at least some English/American fans who are at least fluent enough that they can grasp roughly what is going on even without subtitles and some do try to watch the entire episodes (and there is often a lot of pleading to subtitle entire episodes, but nobody is that loyal ;)). Ficwise I have gotten a few requests mostly for short phrases or terms of endearments people want to strew into the story.
Fictionwise so far all the lesbian fic has been written in German, none in English except one of the German authors translating some of her stories. Meanwhile most of the gay couple fic is written in English, though there has been more German fic recently. But I have made the experience that the German fans are very reluctant to cross post their stories to the General archive (even though it has a German skin available so at least part of the links are in German) even when asked directly whether they wouldn't like to join.
My experience in the AWZ fandom is not that deep, but from what I can tell the German community is actually larger than the English livejournal based one but the two parts rarely interact with each other and both of their own communities and archives. :/
Another thing the German fandom lacks, at least in my opinion, is the presence on journaling platforms. The English fandom on LJ and its clones is enormous. The German part, at least as I remember it, is tiny. I know quite a few people are from Germany, but they don’t participate in anything German. Their journal entries are in English, so that they can communicate with their English speaking friends. After a while, many start writing fanfic in English as well. I am one of those people who really like journaling platforms, because they allow me more freedom than most archives (my main issues with them is generally linked to the fact that I am not free to do as I like), and I generally like reading other peoples’ journals and the flist makes it so much easier to find all the new fic you’re interested in than combing through all the pages of an archive. I like the sense of community as well.
This is an intensely fascinating point and it would be very interesting to see if there was a German only (or rather German in infrastructure, buttons etc) journalling system.
There even is a word for readers like that: “Schwarzleser”. It’s a term that has its origin in the term “Schwarzfahrer” (literally black passenger – meaning someone who takes a train or bus without paying) and “Leser”, the German word for reader. I don’t think the English fandom has developed a term for that yet.
Well, there is "lurker" but it seems a lot more affectionate term and people seem to have sympathy for lurker behavior in the English/livejournal fandom.
Forgot to add/2nd attempt
Date: 2009-05-04 10:35 am (UTC)It was actually a huge eyeopener when I realized that a lot of famous authors or metawriters were actually "secret Germans/German-speakers". (I'm Austrian btw) Ok maybe not secret, but so that you didn't know immediately because everbody seems almost flawlessly good in English when they write (at least from my own ESL reader perspective).
I have to say I have never looked for German fandom unless the source material was German and I knew it was unlikely that it would have spread out into English fandom (Verbotene Liebe, Karl May).
I'd like to say that I prefer seeking out the fandom/fanfic in whatever language is the original one but then again, my Hindi movies fandom is mostly English (though I do have a German board there as well) and I assume the same would be if I ever sought out a Japanese/Chinese/Korean fandom.
I have had some interesting discussions with non-German speakers about their insecurities in writing for VL when they don't "hear" the original dialog and only work from the translations. It was actually quite fascinating (though probably because I was never really into any of the Anime or Dorama fandoms, so those kind of problems were actually quite new to me).
Re: Way too much navel gazing and rambling...
Date: 2009-05-04 10:43 am (UTC)And from what I gather, it's mainly slashers that are interested in the subbing of German soaps, which is probably why the other parts are left out. I don't even know how that works, because the characters all interact with each other and I'm wondering how the English fans deal with missing part of the information.
This is an intensely fascinating point and it would be very interesting to see if there was a German only (or rather German in infrastructure, buttons etc) journalling system.
I know some fic writers maintain blogs on blogger.de, but I don't know how suited it is to develop a fannish infrastructure. And I also know a lot of German fans who don't speak English feel intimidated by the English buttons and rules texts of some platforms that I frequent.
Well, there is "lurker" but it seems a lot more affectionate term and people seem to have sympathy for lurker behavior in the English/livejournal fandom.
A lurker is also someone who only reads discussions etc. (and I've seen the term used mostly in relation to discussions, for some reason), while "Schwarzleser" is very specific and only refers to the reading of stories. And you're right, I think there's more sympathy for the shy lurker behaviour in English fandom than there is for the "rude" Schwarzleser.
Re: Way too much navel gazing and rambling...
Date: 2009-05-04 11:05 am (UTC)When something is unclear the English fans usually ask (like: Why does character X not live in that appartment anymore? Did characters Y and Z break up?), either at the boards or in the youtube comments and other fans answer the questions for them. Some of the international fans are very curious about the entire soap/the rest of the characters while others couldn't care less about anybody outside the couple and their core supporting characters.
As for why those parts in particular, well, I think it's a supply/demand thing. Het romance is fairly easy to find in English if you crave it, from RomComs to soap operas to your Grey's Anatomy and stuff like that. Same sex romances and particularly well done same sex romances are very rare, particularly since the end of Queer As Folk. VL has been doing straight up romantic same sex stories since the late 90s. While English soap operas are only slowly coming around them and there are still a lot of starter hurdles (just ask All My Children's Bianca).
Personally, I can only reccomend the VL stories, they exist both subtitled and not subtitled, cut together to make a straight up story as opposed to a long sprawled out soap opera structure. Just youtube Christian and Olli or Carla and Hanna (or Carla Susanne or Carla Stella or Carla Anke or Tom Ulli or Tom Ulli Olli or Nina Erika and those are just the VL ones and they don't include the storylines of Gero from the late 1990).
I think AWZ has more viewers that watch the the whole soap mostly because RTL offers up the entire show for free streaming into all countries while ARD so far doesn't (though rumouredly they plan to start this summer to offer it). Also, ARD so far has turned a blind eye to people posting only certain storylines on youtube, but people who have put up entire episodes have always been kicked.
Re: Way too much navel gazing and rambling...
Date: 2009-05-04 11:30 am (UTC)